Carnival of Space #370

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Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Carnival of Space #370

Hi all! Here is a new edition of COS for you all to enjoy. Amazing things happen in the heavens above us all the time, so relax and find out a little about the newest stuff

From NextBigFuture

Aquarius a nuclear thermal rocket that uses water heated to over 3000
degrees celsius to solve many human interplanetary transportation
issues.Attributes of a reusable interplanetary human spaceflight
transport are proposed and applied to example transits between the
Earth/Moon system and Deimos, the outer moon of Mars. Because the
transport is 54% water by mass at an interplanetary departure, it is
christened Aquarius. In addition to supporting crew hydration/hygiene,
water aboard Aquarius serves as propellant and as enhanced crew habitat
radiation shielding during interplanetary transit. Key infrastructure
and technology supporting Aquarius operations include pre-emplaced
consumables and subsurface habitat at Deimos with crew radiation
shielding equivalent to sea level on Earth, resupply in a selenocentric
distant retrograde orbit, and nuclear thermal propulsion.

Advancing
in-space nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) technology to the point where
fission reactor core temperatures exceeding 3000° C can be achieved
during major translational maneuvers (burns). Under these conditions,
water molecules pumped into the core will disassociate into hydrogen and
oxygen atoms, and specific impulse ISP near 1000 s could be achieved.
This level of efficiency, twice that attainable with chemical
propulsion, dramatically reduces total mass for an interplanetary
transport of specified payload mass.